In The End
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: Rory adjusts to unexpected circumstances. Spoilers for Cold Blood


**In The End**

So he closed his eyes-

-and woke up.

Amy was gone, the Doctor was gone, the pain was gone, and he was in the TARDIS console room. Except now it was even bigger than before- seemed to stretch on forever- and there was a mist all around. It was dark. And it was light.

There was a boy there, leaning over a computer.

"Hello," Rory said to him.

"You're early," the boy said. "By a few seconds. Never mind, it happens sometimes."

Rory stared into the mist. And then back to the boy.

"Who're you?"

"Adric."

"I've never seen you before in my life."

"No, you wouldn't have. I travelled with a different Doctor."

"A _different _Doctor?"

"The same one," Adric said impatiently, "he just had a different face and personality."

"Oh." Rory paused. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are."

Rory thought about this.

"_Fuck_."

* * *

"Companions," Adric said. "Friends of the Doctor. We all end up here first."

Rory was sitting on a handy nearby sofa, his head in his hands.

"I wanted to marry Amy."

"Sorry."

"I liked the travelling, really I did. But I didn't want to be there forever. How could you do that forever, you'd go nuts! And now I'm _dead_. What about my parents and my stepsister? My mates?"

"Well," Adric said, and looked uncomfortable.

"What about Amy? I want to see her. How do I see her?"

"You can't, not here, sorry."

Rory shook his head. "What's beyond the mist?"

"I don't know, I've never been out there."

Rory wanted to ask why, but other questions overtook that one. "Am I _totally _dead? Totally, completely dead? My heart can't restart and I can't suddenly sit up and all that?"

"You're dead, yes, you can't sit up." Adric looked somewhat uncomfortable.

"Why have you got that look on your face? What _else_ is there? Do I have to go to hell or something?" Rory was not religious, but now he was expecting the very worst the afterlife could throw at him.

"You don't exist anymore," Adric said.

Except that.

* * *

"So I was taken out of time by the a crack in the universe."

"Yes. You were."

Rory thought about it and started to cry, something he hadn't done since he was ten.

"But Amy..." he managed to say, "_Amy_..."

"She's ok where she is." Adric said.

"I was going to marry her! Soon! I looked after her, I was her friend! I loved her! How can she forget me?"

"Well-"

"_How can she forget me_!"

"She didn't mean to."

"They've all forgotten me, haven't they? My mum, everyone. Amy. And suppose that when they die, they get here, they won't _know _me! Nobody will!"

Adric shifted nervously in his seat.

"I'm going to be alone, here, for the rest of my life," Rory said, and in that moment he was barely Rory Williams at all, but something else, an abandoned thing.

"For the rest of your death," Adric corrected.

"For the rest of _everything_."

Adric said nothing to that.

"Amy will fall in love with someone else, won't she? Or she'll travel forever. I'll never see her again, God, I'll never see her again..."

Just then a naked man appeared.

"Whoa! Hel_lo _there!" he yelled. "New boy! Liking it!"

Rory stared open-mouthed. The man winked at him, then vanished again.

"That's Jack," Adric said with a sigh. "He just appears from time to time, but he doesn't stay, and he never remembers this place when he's alive."

Rory wanted to ask all the obvious questions, but it wasn't the time.

"Amy," he said, trying to keep the name on his lips for as long as possible. "Will I forget _her_?"

"No, you won't."

"Good."

"And the Doctor remembers you. He thinks about you a lot. He's sorry for what happened."

Jack appeared again, almost fully clothed this time, and with three arrows in his back.

"Sorry!" he called. "Having a _hell _of a day!"

He vanished again and Rory's mind got back on track.

"If he remembers, why can't he just tell Amy?"

"Because either she won't believe him, or it'll make her very, very sad."

"Oh. Yeah."

Adric stood up and slid back to his computer. Rory remained where he was. It was funny how much like being alive being dead was...

"When my gran died when I was fourteen, everyone told me she was at peace," he finally said, "but now I'm dead, and I'm not at peace. Not even a _bit_."

"I know," Adric said. "Go for a walk around, see what you find."

Rory stared into the mist. At first he thought there was nothing out there, but then he saw there were shapes. Buildings, maybe. Houses. Just not homes.

"Go through the mist?"

"Yes."

"I thought you couldn't, you know, move on until you'd come to terms with being dead. And with being wiped out of existence. And I _haven't_."

"You probably won't, ever," Adric said, in a way that made Rory's brain and heart scream and scream and scream. "But it's not bad here."

Rory thought he saw, for the first time, a few other people. Nearest to him was a blonde girl in a waitress's dress, running her hand over the walls. He wondered who she was. He wondered who any of them were.

He thought of Amy, wondered if she would be here one day, and tried to make the screaming inside him stop. It didn't stop, but it subsided a little.

"I don't want to go," he whispered to nobody. "I _didn't _want to go."

"No-one does," Adric said. "But you did die doing something very brave. Something the Doctor would probably have done."

"Yeah," Rory said sadly. "Thanks."

He walked into the mist.

"You never know," Adric called after him, "you might get to go back, people do sometimes-"

Rory didn't believe him, although he badly wanted to.

"Amy," he whispered as he walked through the mist, "Amy, Amy, Amy..."

He clung to her desperately and tryed to visualise her face. Amy. His Amy. The only girl he'd ever loved. Who was gone from him forever. Amy. Amy. Amy...

Jack popped into view in front of him, holding a severed arm and screaming.

"Don't look so sad, new boy," he said when the scream faded away. "Things turn out okay in the end, mostly. I mean, in general, _I'm_ doing pretty well." He waved the severed arm, wiped some blood from his face, and disappeared.

Rory walked on.


End file.
